Río Wang’s last tour of this year was organized to one of the most beautiful, and at the same time least known places in Europe, the Crimean peninsula. We wrote about our plans in the invitation, and about the places to see in the table of contents dedicated to the Crimea. And about what we saw, everyone gives account in the following joint post, a nice windup of this year. We hope to see you again next year.

Studiolum

Crimean Diary

Gábor

A Crimea in Impressions

The great Tatar lady speaks Russian clearly and quickly. Proud and principled, she helped to found local schools so that her language wouldn’t die. She tells of past suffering under different regimes but these don’t seem to weigh her down. There’s no heaviness about her and the work of managing a guest house and a family hang lightly on her frame. Things are better now and there is hope for the future.

Bakhchysarai, cultural capital of the Crimean Tatars. Lowing cows, watchful cats, goats, stone sphinxes, and coal smoke. The mellent charm of the muezzin’s call to prayer is warm and welcoming, calling us to god.

A long walk among the tattered ancient streets, a small kitten in our train. A 16th-century Karaite kenassa in near ruins; a number of modest mosques in good repair, dwelling among mud, stones, creeping vines, painted wood, and trickling water. We thread our journey with rides in rattling marshrutkas.

Early morning awake to the chorus of dogs, milky mist unveiling the mountain tops. Omelette breakfast with baklava, black tea with rose petal jam and Turkish coffee. Another place feeling like another time.

Dusty gray-green grass, hillocks. Gold in the scattered trees. Stands of poplars and handsome horses. Hot beams of sun in the face shine back at me as I look out over the domain they lord.

Evpatoria. Tattered streets and tidy squares. Archetype of the Ottoman mosque beside a Byzantine revival church. Why is there a clock in the mosque? Because it tells us the time, my silly one. A square surrounded by arches (in Tuscan stripes) and a high dome.

In the bus early for a bit of a drive and a bit of a climb. Trees and vines and berries of black, red and blue. Hills and stones; mountains and stones. A tough climb. Thorny bushes, underbrush, slippery stones, furry moss, false footholds. A cool sweet spring and a ruined city to explore.

Overlooking space, a broad valley, a high ridge. Mist in the air and tart rosehips to nibble. Castle, basilica, and cave.

Eski-Kermen. A citadel on an archipelago of rocks rising from the green valley floor. High, a Swiss cheese of caves and ruins. Friendly cats and hikers. Fog, dew and colored leaves, rock basins filled with green water and plants. A rough gray white stone is the fabric of which rooms are carved, and lookouts, caverns, holes, shrines, and reverent spaces.

Khersonesos. A 50-hectare ruined Greek settlement, a place of legend and supposed seed of Russian Christianity. A new basilica, a buzzing of bees, a holy woman makes a chant that flawlessly melds with the interior space, a gesamtkunstwerk from a single voice, delicate as a breath, warming the cavernous church like a careful fire.

Yalta. A city on the sea, a girl with a little dog. We stroll, a flânerie in Crimea. A shining milky silver sea meets a white softly streaked sky, a horizon effaced. We float. We fly. A roaring ship cuts the boiling glass. A colorful capsule on a groaning thread lifts us up above the surly earth. Leave a flower of the mind behind and descend.

The rack, the ruin, a neglected opulence abashed, hiding behind wrought iron and curtains of greenery. A dignified elderly woman waits in the shadows and cries for her faded glory.

Why is the sea here called black? The Turkic languages use the words white and black to signal the ideas of greater and lesser. Thus, when there are two of anything needing naming, seas, for example, we get a White Sea (for the Turks, the Mediterranean) and a Black Sea.

A song (from a different sea) comes to me.

The seagull song from У самого синего моря (“By the Bluest of Seas,” Boris Barnet, USSR, 1936). (Although this recording sounds like it ends abruptly, this is, in fact, the entire song as it is heard in the film.)

The first early morning in Bakhchisaray. You cannot yet see everything, the valley unfolds slowly from the dim light. We climb the steep slope above our house, we can already see the bizarre forms of the huge rocks, the ancient mountains. A barren hillside, sparse grass, spiky, bright green junipers. Goats and skinny cows graze on it. By the time we reach the cliffs, the valley and the opposite hillside emerges from the fog. Beneath us – Bakhchisaray. In the narrow valley, tattered houses and buildings, the Khan’s palace with a minaret, the roof of a new Armenian church gleaming in the sunlight.

The first cave city. An increasingly steep forest path leads up to the rocks. There, in the rocks, large caverns – cells of monks and a small Orthodox church –, everything in the caverns. There is only one monk living up here, and he guides us. He seems to have come here from Tarkovsky’s Rublev: an incredibly lean and tall figure, with the wind draging back his long, black hair, his beautiful face, tanned skin and dark, bright eyes that reflect attention, intellect, humor and obsession.

Nearing Evpatoria on the bus, we suddenly catch sight of the sea. We stop, run down to the water, and in a moment everyone – as if on command – bend down among the waves creeping onto the beach, and collect treasures – shells, pebbles, dried shrimp.

We advance in the thick leaf litter in the autumn forest. The road passes through a narrow valley, flanked by steep mountains. Among the tree trunks, wherever the eyes can see, are grayish black stones. The cemetery of the Karaim Jews. It seems endless. We do not reach the end (in fact, there is none), for there are four thousand tombstones hidden in the forest. I cannot imagine a more beautiful and comforting final resting place.

A lake glistening in the autumn foliage – Mangup Lake. We climb Mangup Mountain in gleaming sunshine. Along the way, another Karaim cemetery in the forest. On the plateau, the remnants of the ancient Gothic city, “full comfort” cave apartments of several rooms. A pile of stones – this is all that is left from the Karaim synagogue. From the edge of the plateau, a fantastic view of the gorge and the huge vertical rock vall.

We set off in a dense fog. We climb up very steep terrain, with the occasional help of small ladders, and, of course, the boys who form a chain to help up those having difficulty. On the top, the astonishing luxury caves of Eski Kermen unfold in the mist. The fog slowly breaks up, the sun comes out, but not so much that we cannot see the canyon and the mountains over it. The mist of the past is writhing in the depth, it does not reveal everything…

At 6 a.m. in the fog, we go south toward the sea. The sun is just rising when we stop at a lookout point. In front of us, a vertically hillside, and at its foot, the silhouette of a small, onion-domed church is projected against the gray background. The field to the right of the little church is filled with a blanket of clouds. Clouds deep below us. Meanwhile, the sun is rising, and something gleams here and there among the clouds. Soon we realize that it is the sea spread out before us. As the sun rises, the clouds disappear, and the sea is shining in full sunlight. Foros.

We get out of the bus at the edge of a small, poor town. Before of us, beige, crenellated fortress walls. Sudak, the 14th-century fortress of the Genoese merchants. We enter the castle gate, a huge area embraced by a steep curve of rocky mountains. The walls run along the very top of the rocks, with a tower here and there to create a fabled site. Beyond the gate, the mountain rises steeply. We set off to the right, and suddenly among the rocks the sea emerges. I turn to the left, and beyond the cliffs, the sea again. Then I suspect what I soon discover, that our traveling companions who went directly to the highest cliffs, also met the sea above the walls.

Sounds. The song of the muezzin at 5:20 every morning.

Everywhere – even among the rocks rarely visited by people – are well-groomed, well-fed, sleek cats. They come with us. They do not ask for food, but only for company and caressing.

Dorka

Six sentences

1. First we are shocked by the breathtaking natural landscape, which forces us to think about the infinite past – million-year old mountains, chalk cliffs, canyons, basalt columns. Unbelievable shapes and sizes.

2. Then we are amazed by the traces of human life, both in the untouched and the modern landscape, from the already perceivable, but still fabled distant past – cave towns, monasteries, castles, palaces, churches. What colors, what shapes!

3. With the cities you have to work, it is not easy to find beauty in them, but soon you will see the style through the decay.

4. Finally I am astonished to see again the memories of my travel in the Soviet Union some thirty years ago, the tangible traces of socialism recalling ideological and, strangely, comforting memories. But how could it be otherwise? What are these thirty years compared to three hundred and three thousand and thirty million? Merely an instant.

5. I’m really happy to understand the language, more or less. I love its melody, and I’m glad that I can speak a few words with the usually talkative and friendly locals. Why is it that the Russian inscriptions seem more exotic, the old ones too, but especially the scrappy modern ones?

6. And in top of all that, it is so good to speak with my travelling companinos about yesterday, today and tomorrow, while climbing up the mountain and descending into the valley, walking on the promenade and leaning on our elbows at the bar, trembling in the cable car and shaking in the bus, while the landscape, of which we cannot get enough, is just running alongside us.

Kati

Crimea

When I told people in the Netherlands I was going to the Crimea, most of them didn’t exactly know where I was heading. Some Dutch vaguely know of the existence of the Crimea because they have heard of it in school. But nobody I spoke to could pinpoint this region in Europe. That is a pity because this region is beautiful and worth visiting.

If asked how I experienced the trip I can say I loved the Crimea. I could tell about the interesting history, geography, the beautiful landscape, nice climate and our friendly Tatar hosts and the other people. But there are many places in Europe that offer a similar experience. The difference with the rest of Europe for me is that the Crimea is a region that has it all and is a relatively unknown touristic destination in the West. It's not on the beaten path.

In the West the people I know are not so very interested in Eastern Europe. My guess is that language and culture is a barrier. Most Dutch people understand and speak English quite well. To travel in that part of Europe you basicly have to be able to read Cyrillic script and speak some Russian, but Slavic languages such as Russian are just to hard to learn for the occasional visit. The Dutch, if interested in history at all (we are hard working people that like to focus on core business, a term that unfortunately is also applied in our private lives) the focus is on the West. We haven’t learned so much about the East. So a place like the Crimea is something exotic.

Fortunately I had the privilege to travel with a group of Hungarian people that because of the geographic proximity of the their country to the East and their 20th century history bridge East and West. When traveling in Russia (the Crimea has been Russian since 1783 and is still considered by Russians as part of their hinterland) it is quite nice to be in company of group of people that can explain the particular oddities and sensitivities of Russia. Russia is highly exotic, and in my opinion even more than our favourite exotic beach destinations in the far East.

Jan Joost

Two photos

I’m not a great photographer, and I’m quite sure that of everything I’ve photographed there have been made better photos with better cameras. Nevertheless, I send you these two:

The garden of Bakhchisaray with those old vines – not specifically Crimean, but for me nevertheless, they are Crimean.

To Lemberg, then to Odessa, then Maramureș and Bukovina following, interrupted by the Art Nouveau of Szabadka/Subotica, and then lo, she finds herself in the Crimea. More specifically, in the fabulous Bakhchisaray. Thus far it is really fantastic, with the Khan’s palace and the Bakhchisaray Fountain. Then come some smaller and larger surprises, not all of them positive, but never mind: the experience, the details never seen before, and the resulting cohesive whole holds them in balance.

And the Tatars deserve all support. The Crimean Tatars were collectively deported by Stalin, many of them perished, only a handful of them returned to their native land (including our hosts). Each fate, of the living and of the dead, is a bitter one, with real tragedies, of which the traveler speaking no Tatar and just a poor Russian can only scratch the surface. Thus, it is the task of our guide – and organizer of our journey – to let everything roll smoothly, and this is not easy, and sometimes even impossible…

Fantastic scenery, almost forgotten, but wonderfully unique creations of history, Karaim, Tatar and Gothic cave cities (how could they live in them?), Genoese fortresses, interspersed with a few Orthodox cathedrals and chapels and Tatar mosques, and then a series of Crimean palaces, including that of Vorontsov, and of course the Livadiya palace of the Tsars in Yalta, where the memory of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt is almost tangible. Then the sea, the Black one (the little brother of the “white” Mediterranean), then the race of the thousand year old Soviet military cars to the spectacular mountain waterfall, but mainly climbing, climbing, and again climbing in the beautiful landscape, on the difficult terrain… If this journey gave me no other experience, then two things are sure: one can sometimes bear more than one would think, and with the heart-warming feeling that in a good group the members sometimes forgot their own fatigue in order to help to each other. It was good to see again the old friends and acquaintances, with whom our relationship has been deepened, and to get to know the new participants. I hope that, in one way or another, we met again.

Anna

Pushkin’s ring

Chufut Kale (Jewish Fortress), the Karaim cave city (Kati’s photo) at the edge of the plateau with the apses of the two kenasas (Karaim synagogues)

I liked the cave cities the most. It was really a golden autumn, with beautiful colors, and a breathtaking scenery from the top of the mountains. These cities bear witness to a once advanced civilization.

I want to share with you a little story, which I read in a book on the Crimea, that I purchased in Yalta.

Pushkin fell in love with Elizaveta Xaverovna, the wife of Count Vorontsov, governor of Southern Russia. The woman bestowed on the poet one of a pair of golden seal-rings as a token of her love.

The rings were the work of the Karaim jewellers of the famous cave city of Chufut Kale, which we visited.

The seal ring on Pushkin’s finger, and its imprint.Its inscription is: “Simha, son of the venerable old Rabbi Yosef, let his memory be blessed”

As Két Sheng has pointed out, the above Hebrew transliteration was erroneous as published, from left to right. This is the correct form:שמחה בכ"ר
יוסף הזקן ז"לAnd with expanded abbreviations:שמחה בן כבוד רבי
יוסף הזקן זכרונו לברכה

Pushkin wore this ring until the end of his life, and he sealed with it his intimate letters. When he was killed in the duel, his friend Vasily Zhukovsky removed it from his finger and he preserved it until the end of his life. He left it to Turgenev with the condition that he should give it over to Lev Tolstoy. However, this did not happen, because the lover of Turgenev, the Spanish-born French singer Pauline Viardot García donated it to the St. Petersburg Lyceum, where Pushkin had studied. Unfortunately, the school was plundered in 1917, and the ring disappeared.

The ring’s companion was left by Vorontsova to her son, who probably suspected nothing of the romantic story, and he probably squandered it somewhere.

The ring was drawn by Pushkin, and he also wrote a poem about it with the title Save me, my talisman (Hrani menya moy talizman).

Pushkin’s drawing of the ring and Vorontsova

Pushkin: Храни меня, мой талисман (Save me, my talizman). Song of V. Strannik from the film Сгорая пламенем любви (Burning in love’s flames, 2008) about the loves of Pushkin.